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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Not-Writing

School has just started here in Virginia, and
like many teachers, I’ve been asking my students what they did this summer.
So it seemed appropriate to write about my summer, and how I learned the value
of Not-Writing.

My summer has been framed by two Highlights workshops with the fabulous Patti Gauch: one in May, the other this October. Between May and October, I was supposed to write the entire first draft of a new story. No worries, right?

I'm a huge proponent of the Butt in Chair school
of writing: You write whether you feel like it or not. You hope the muse shows
up, but if she doesn't, you don't sit at your desk, weeping softly and consuming
large amounts of ice cream. You write. Finally, the muse feels so left out that
she actually shows up.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered how well I
wrote when… I didn’t write. Here's what happened:

I was anxious to start- and just plain anxious. Like Winnie the Pooh, I thought, thought, thought about my
story, a retelling of The Brave Little Tailor. I found a lovely plotting guide
on Tess Hilmo's blog that forced me to ask the big questions about my WIP. For me, those
were about reversals: what goes wrong and why?

In late March, I sat outside at a café,
sipped a drink, and stared at the Blue Ridge Mountains. I worked through the plot guide, scribbling questions
and what-ifs. I kept at it the next few weeks. I
thought about my WIP as I drove to work. I played with different characters. I even
looked organized, pulling out that dogeared paper and jotting down new
notes. (My organized self has since lost that paper.)

Little by little, pieces of the story came
together. After about two weeks, several scenes were so vivid that I had to
write them; they just wouldn’t leave me alone. By the time
I attended the May workshop, I knew the major points of the whole story.

I loved Not-Writing.

It worked so well that I used it all summer. Before I wrote a new scene, I'd jot down notes:
snatches of dialog, highlights, images I could already see. After 5-10 minutes,
I had the bones of the scene down.

I could hear conversations. I could see my story's landscape.

Here was the awesome part: I could tell right
away whether that section was going to bore me. You know that awful feeling when
you've written 1,500 words and you don't care anymore? And then you have to figure
out why?

Those few minutes of Not-Writing prevented most
of that. If my notes bored me, I'd play with them till they
didn't. Even if it took a while. It wasn't outlining. There were no bullet points, no Roman
numerals. Not-Writing used the fuel that works best for me: questions.

I really hate it when folks talk about Process-with-a-capital-P,
because it sounds pretentious (with a capital P). It makes it sound like
there’s a magic bullet, like you don't have to Butt in Chair your way through a
manuscript.

Yet the flip side of writing is that we figure
out what works for us. We discover those rituals that allow us to get words on
the page with courage and strength. We find methods that prevent us from giving our WIP
a title like, I'm Really, Really Sorry I
Couldn't Write a Better Book.

Not-Writing is what worked for me. I wrote a 79,000 word
manuscript and mailed it to Patti two weeks ago. I survived. Even my one
remaining houseplant survived.

Was my story pretty? No. Did I have a small
breakdown while driving it to the Post Office? Oh, yes.

But I didn’t write,
"I'm Sorry" on the first page. So it was a victory.

I'd love to hear from you. What do you do to get
that first draft down? What rituals or methods keep you sane?

16 comments:

Sarah, you've gotten me so inspired. I love the idea of taking a deep breath, stepping back, and not-writing. We can put so much pressure on ourselves to produce that it can stifle our creativity. Thank you for showing us this way to let the creative side loose!

I appreciated this so much. Just shared it with our Children's Book Hub Facebook Group!

I use a variation on Not-Writing, I suppose. I like to work things out in my head, at least partially, before starting to put them on paper (or should I say, on screen). I try wordings, bits of dialogue, find out where a possible plot point might take me, while I'm just doing the ordinary things of life, and then when there's something to build on, I write. That process can be a daily thing -- writing a chapter, pondering the next bit, writing another chapter... I tend to call it the Think System (shades of The Music Man there.) It's what works for me. I don't know that it keeps me sane, however. That's a different issue altogether. It does keep me writing. ;-)

I never thought about it before, but I do a lot of not-writing. I mean, other than the working/cleaning/reading/beingamom type of not-writing. I often take a big step back (especially when I'm muddling through the middle) to double check my outline, my scene cards and my plot points to make sure I'm still on schedule and that things are holding together. I love not-wrtiting, I've just never thought about it that way. :)

My best "not-writing" is a road trip with good music. Wonderful post, Sarah. I feel and understand what you are saying because you've described me. (Maybe it's a teacher thing)I don't write everyday, but I "think" writing 24/7. :)

I do the same thing, only with about six different notebooks and a diary! It's so much fun, and I was just sharing with Kristen that occasionally I'll have to write in the notes, "I am a genius!" when I think I've come up with something especially brilliant. (Of course, time and thought may reveal it wasn't brilliant at all....)

Oh yes, not writing works. I decide I will not write but go to the beach, a 15 minute walk from my house. As I walk to the beach, ideas jump out in my head. I get to the beach and more ideas pop up. By the time I walk home I have an entire chapter in my head. That evening I type it up and, it's pretty good. Much better than if I had sat in front of the computer all afternoon (wishing I was at the beach) Thanks for this great post!